Andrew Beaujon will no doubt be delighted to learn that my wife is taking me to see Genesis’ “Turn it on Again” tour this Sunday at the Verizon Center. But, if you’re like the rest of the people I’ve told about this generosity, most of you are probably thinking one of two things:

A) Isn’t that sap a sweet guy! Why else would he accompany his wife to see one of the worst bands of all time?

Or…

B) Doesn’t he know that Peter Gabriel isn’t coming?

The latter is more perplexing than the former, because no one I know, other than a pal who used to loan me bootleg videos of the band playing on Scandinavian television, actually gives a crap about Genesis with or without Peter Gabriel (and if they care so much about Peter Gabriel why doesn’t Steve “I was in GTR, bitches” Hackett get any love?).

So, why front? Phil Collins was the Kanye West, 50 Cent, and Kenny Chesney of the early- to mid-eighties: ubiquitous. Unless your parents were classical musicians or Christian fundamentalists who wouldn’t let you listen to pop radio or date, you know “Abacab,” “No Reply at All,” “Invisible Touch,” and “Misunderstanding” just as well as you know, like, the national anthem or “My Humps.”

Yer MTV was actually pretty entertaining last night:

1. That indeed was Clipse standing behind Pharrell during the pregame show. Pusha T and Malice were nowhere to be found later, though. Sigh.
2. Mark Ronson should call his band the Neverending Formula.
3. Dave Grohl should curate a hardcore-and-metal version of All Tomorrow’s Parties.
4. Dr. Dre now has the physique of a superhero, skinny legs and all. Timbaland, on the other hand, is obviously taking workout tips from Aaron Neville.
5. Kanye West is probably still performing this morning, at top volume, in that room at the Palms, with a bunch of passed-out people littering the floor around him, still in their white slatted sunglasses.
6. I had no idea until last night that Pete Wentz is not the lead singer of Fall Out Boy. I am proud of this.
7. You could tell that Diddy was trying not to stare at Alicia Keys‘ butt. Her “Freedom” breakdown was nice, if a bit abrupt.
8. The rapper from Gym Class Heroes chugged a drink instead of giving an acceptance speech. Enjoy it, bro, because in a few years you’ll probably be working at Kinkos. Or hosting an MTV reality show. Same difference.
9. You know you are old when Justin Timberlake starts talking about getting old.
10. Is there a more boring R&B superstar than Rihanna? At least Chris Brown can do mad-crazy headstands. Wait, maybe Akon is more boring than Rihanna. Then again, maybe Amy Winehouse is more boring than all of them. And she didn’t even show up to prove it.

Bonus: It was genius to have Miss Teen South Carolina say the words “Wu Tang Clan.”

Georgie James. Ris Paul Ric. John Davis and Chris Richards have already made their post–Q and Not U presence felt via ambient pop and Tod Rundgren–style balladry.

But what the hell ever happened to Harris Klahr? You know, the talented multi-instrumentalist who unintentionally named this blog when he wrote/sang the song “Black Plastic Bag.”

Well, let it now be known that Harris Klahr has become President. He’s just released his first full-length Take Music on the download-only Friends label—which means that you’re only a few clicks away from enjoying its delicate krautrock grooves and afro-pop inspired call and response melodies (also available via iTunes).

The Pam Berry mix has got me in an indie-pop mood, digging this and that.

And I’ve been jamming to the new Brunettes album, Structure & Cosmetics. The New Zealand duo has been putting out super twee stuff for a while now. This is their first stateside release. While I wish the girl-group refs weren’t so obvious, it’s still solid all the way through.

You can listen to “Small Town Crew” on your way out of D.C.

Pam Berry, former D.C. resident and queen of all things indie pop, gets a fetching tribute mix from Annapolis-based blogger Skatterbrain. In hindsight, we should have covered her more. (Maybe it was because she worked at CP.) You can read about Berry’s projects here and here.

Berry founded a zine called Chickfactor. I still remember discovering it while waiting around at Maxwell’s for Heavenly to come on. Ever since being handed that first copy, I was hooked. I consider it responsible for championing Magnetic Fields before just about everyone else. And they chronicled Women Who Rock without fuss or rockist cliches. Even after several moves, I still have copies of certain issues.

But Berry did more than document the indie-pop scene, she was also responsible for making some its best songs. So thank you Skatterbrain for reminding us of that fact. You should definitely check out his blog.

But if you just want his “Essential Pam Berry Compilation,” you can grab it here.

You need something like this. A band that brings it.

The Budos Band opened for Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings a few years back at the Black Cat. It was truly an amazing show–one that actually provoked a D.C. crowd to move their feet. And while nobody upstages Sharon Jones, the Budos Band held their own with their instrumentals that recalled the best soul jazz and afro pop.

So, for your weekend, we present the Budos Band. Listen to them here. We suggest turning up “Chicago Falcon.”

OK. I’m biased. Of course I prefer Aaron Leitko’s review of the new Travis Morrison album, All Y’All, to the one in Pitchfork. The former is in a publication that puts money in my bank account and the latter is in one that doesn’t. That said, a 4.5?!? Anyone with internet access can tell that there’s some kind of extra context needed to understand a number that low (not to mention the legendary 0.0 received by Morrison’s previous album, Travistan). After all, everything I’ve heard from the new album sounds nice, even if it’s not, like, GODHEAD or anything. But, come on, neither is Shellac’s Excellent Italian Whatever, an album that the All Y’All reviewer awarded a generous 7.0. And the one Hellfighters show I saw was, if not as exciting as a Dismemberment Plan show, high quality stuff. So, like, what gives? The Dismemberment Plan broke up. Get over it. You paid your entry fee; the band entertained you. Morrison doesn’t owe you anything. Give the guy a break.

In the District Line, Jason Cherkis checks in with DJ Roland Tolbert, a regular fixture on the decks on O Street SW this summer. “Tolbert has been spinning on the block for five years,” Cherkis writes. It’s no easy task in a neighborhood where the competition for air time is fierce.”

Why do you have to move for work? Just find a WiFi hookup and a decent coffee joint, home-school the kids, and you’re all set. That’s Bob Mould in this week’s Ask Bob. Got a question for a D.C. resident who’s led at least two classic bands? It’s as simple as clicking here.

UGK’s Underground Kingz is “that rarest of hip-hop feats: A double disc that never becomes a chore to hear,” writes Joe Warminsky. Read the review and check out the video for the first single, “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You).”

In One Track Mind, Aaron Leitko gets the Mantras to explain the provenance of their very Creation song “Demonator,” which you can download free here. The Mantras play the Black Cat on Monday, Aug. 20.

Plus our picks: Leitko on New York’s “out-rock-drone-dub” outfit Religious Knives, Friday at the Velvet Lounge; Maggie Serota on Tortoise-y Richmond outfit Ilad, Friday at the Red and Black; and Cherkis on Glorytellers, led by ex-Karate and Secret Stars member Geoff Farina, Sunday at the Black Cat.

Fiction writers seldom get rock right. Perhaps it’s because they aim for the bleachers—you know, like Cameron Crowe’s Stillwater, the Almost Famous band that was Zeppelin, the Allman Brothers, and Skynyrd rolled into one. Somehow, in trying to achieve too much, most writers don’t achieve anything at all. William Gibson, though, he’s different. In his new novel, Spook Country, the post-science fiction novelist gets at something substantial.

Here, Hollis Henry, the former lead singer from the Curfew (terrible name, I know), is asked by Alberto, a geo-hacking, culture-jamming, Wired-type artist, where the band broke up:

“She looked him in the eye and saw deep otaku focus. Of course that tended to be the case, if anyone recognized her as the singer in an early-nineties cult unit. The Curfew’s fans were virtually the only people who knew the band had existed, today, aside from radio programmers, pop historians, critics, and collectors. With the increasingly temporal nature of music, though, the band had continued to acquire new fans. Those it did acquire, like Alberto, were often formidably serious. She didn’t know how old he might have been, when the Curfew had broken up, but that might as well have been yesterday, as far as his fanboy module was concerned. Still having her own fangirl module quite centrally in place, for a wide variety of performers, she understood, and thus felt a responsibility to provide him with an honest answer, however unsatisfying.”

What I like about this quote is that Gibson, who was born in 1948, nails the granularity and fractionalization of today’s music culture. The Internet has allowed us to bury ourselves inside our own Curfews to the point where few of us seem to realize how inchoate things have become. To borrow a term from Robert Christgau, there is no monoculture anymore. For those of us who want to at least understand the place and appeal of all the Curfews of the world—even if it’s the most surface understanding—the landscape is more treacherous than ever. Any good music critic has been Alberto, with the “deep otaku focus.” (Anyone heard the new Baroness? It totally rules, dude!) But there’s a difference between being that guy and being that guy and knowing which Ravel or U2 record to recommend.

Top-ten lists are due when editors ask for them—usually in November or December of a given year—but I think that editors ask for them months, maybe years, too soon. Sometimes all you can do is guess at a record’s impact. For example, in 2006, one of the metal magazines to which I contribute asked for a year-end list several days before the release of Mastodon’s Blood Mountain, a major-label record that was both highly anticipated and hard to come by. A friend burned me an unmastered, unsequenced leak and I spun it only once or twice before putting it at number one.

By the time the issue hit the newsstands I doubt it would’ve made my top five. But, hey, so it goes. A fellow music critic even admitted as much when a mutual friend solicited our favorite records of recent years (he’s been busy raising a kid). “These are the ones that I still listen to,” the fellow music critic wrote. Which gave me the idea of revisiting an old list. For no good reason, I chose 2003 and set about making a top 10, based on records that I still listen to and own. I didn’t look at the old list or check any year-end summaries until I was done.

Here’s my new list in alphabetical order:

Cult of Luna The Beyond (Earache)
Down in the Basement: Joe Bussard’s Treasure Trove of Vintage 78s, 1926-1937 (Old Hat)
Killing Joke Killing Joke (Red Ink)
Lungfish Love is Love (Dischord)
Mogwai Happy Songs for Happy People (Matador)
Pelican Australasia (Hydra Head)
Supersilent 6 (Rune Grammofon)
David Sylvian Blemish (Samadhi Sound)
Viktor Vaughn Vaudeville Villain (Sound-Ink)
Miroslav Vitous Universal Syncopations (ECM)

And here’s the list I sent to Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll in 2003.

Two CDs on my original list (Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below and Dizzee Rascal’s Boy in Da Corner) made it into the Pazz & Jop Top 10. But neither has really stood the test of time, which suggests that maybe folks aren’t pulling out those Basement Jaxx and Fountains of Wayne records either.

Or maybe it’s just that the hippest of hip hop is only good for a quick fix. Though Ta-Nehisi Coates was on the Viktor Vaughn record right away, it only charted at 141 on the P&J list.

For those who’ve heard both, who thinks that Speakerboxxx/The Love Below holds up better than Vaudeville Villain? I doubt it’s few—if any.